Retractions
by Klayter McCabe
Summary: Ryan and Esposito vignettes for season three, with some Jenny and Lanie. "I have other people in my life who would do terrible things for necessary reasons. I have enough murderers."
1. Knockdown

**Sleep**

_Klayter McCabe_

000

It was not a big deal.

They are both fine. Ryan's throat is sore, and his shoulders hurt, but he is fine. Esposito has a thin red line around his neck, but he is also fine.

Jenny meets him at the hospital in tears, even though Ryan told everyone that he did not need to go to the hospital. It's embarrassing to have to ride in the back of an ambulance, even with the sirens off. Esposito is cleared for release from the crime scene.

"I'm fine," says Ryan, to yet another nurse. "I want to go home."

So Jenny shows up to take him. Ryan hugs her, and she fists her hands in the back of his cold, wet shirt.

"Oh my God," she says. "I'm so glad you're okay. I'm so glad you're okay."

"I'm fine." Ryan breathes down into her hair. The smell of Jenny - her sweat, her watermelon shampoo - is bright against the sour hospital air. It is familiar, and, though this word embarrasses him, safe.

"What happened?" Jenny asks, driving him home.

"They got us in the stairwell," Ryan says. "There was a flashbang. We were disoriented. Then we were in a warehouse for awhile. Then Beckett and Castle came in firing. Well, Beckett came in firing." He pauses. "Jesus Christ, I can't believe _Castle _saved our asses. How am I ever going to live _that _down?"

"I'm sure he'll find a way to write about his own heroics," Jenny muses. She does not ask for more detail about what happened in the warehouse. Ryan is grateful that she agreed to marry him. When they get home, he has a few beers and looks at the television screen without watching what's on it. Jenny sits next to him on the couch, their legs not quite touching, and polishes off an entire bottle of white wine.

"I love you," she says, during commercial breaks.

"I know," says Ryan. "I love you, too."

He is very tired that night, but he does not sleep well.

000

Ryan and Esposito both show up for work the next morning, even though they have been told they do not have to, even though there is a mountain of paperwork to do about their brief abduction. People in the precinct give them awkward looks, and Castle greets them with a too-loud,

"Welcome back!"

Even though they have not really been gone. Ryan pours black coffee for both himself and Esposito, and they look over each other's shoulders as they fill out statements to make sure their stories are in perfect synch.

"How are your arms?" Ryan asks.

"Great," says Esposito. "I was gonna see a chiropractor for these back pains I've been having, but I think they're all better now."

Ryan laughs. They finish filling out their first round of statements, and maybe it's just the coffee talking but Ryan feels better about his day.

000

A week later, Ryan is still having nightmares. They are photorealistic fabrications on top of what actually happened: first Ryan cannot breathe. Then he can breathe, but his leg has a bullet in it. He is on fire. Then he cannot breathe again. He inhales water and is stunned by the pain and desperation of drowning. He can watch Esposito across the room as Esposito watches him die.

Eventually he wakes up.

Ryan is an adult man. It is ridiculous that he is waking up sweating in the middle of the night. It is ridiculous that those men so confidently isolated him as the weaker party. Was it his suit? His face? Something in his posture? Did he fight less hard than Esposito in that stairwell? He has never before had to evaluate himself so ruthlessly.

"Kevin?" Jenny murmurs at him, still half-asleep. "Kevin, are you okay?"

"I'm fine, sweetie," he whispers. "Just go back to sleep." He gets up to wash his face and pour himself a glass of water.

It was not a big deal. Ryan is just a little shook up right now, but everything will be fine.

000

_January 27, 2011_


	2. Lucky Stiff

**Lucky Numbers**

_Klayter McCabe_

000

When they get back to work, Esposito has to fight the desire to avoid making eye contact with Ryan. It would be embarrassing to suddenly have trouble looking his partner in the face. It would be unnecessarily dramatic.

Esposito is not fond of drama, but that's what all this is about. Lanie, who cares about him too much and thinks almost as highly of Ryan, surprises him.

"Is it true they waterboarded Kevin?" she asks. She does not cry or ask _are you okay _or indulge in any other hysterics, for which Esposito is grateful. She just wants facts.

"I don't know if 'waterboarded' is the right word," he replies. "I guess it was more of a simulated drowning."

"And what did they do to you?" she asks.

"Nothing. I just...watched."

Lanie does not question him further. Esposito wants to add something to that statement, but he cannot find the words. He wants to apologize.

Here is the thing: what was the point of it? Because now Ryan looks weak and Esposito feels stupid. He was a soldier for years, and he loved it in a way that is impossible to articulate to anyone who has never seen war, but this was war in a different context, one where he was not carrying an assault rifle, and there is just the barest chance that he was unprepared. It's not that none of Esposito's friends have died violent deaths; it's not that he has never felt helpless in the face of evil. It's just that in that warehouse he began to evaluate the possibility that he and Ryan would die in pain and surrounded by strangers, and that their bodies might not be found for years.

Esposito is not afraid to die. He doesn't expect to die young, but he doesn't expect not to, either. And maybe it's just been too long since Afghanistan, because if he didn't manage to forget the abstract-I am not afraid to die-he did manage to forget the concrete-the way fear liquefies your organs and makes your insides feel so fucking cold. That night _was _like Afghanistan, in the way certain images stuck with him, random and luminous as an acid trip: that man's hand fisted in Ryan's soaking wet hair as he held him underwater, the orange stripes of street light across Lockwood's face, the pattern of dirt on the concrete floor. Like his memories of the worst of Afghanistan, he knows these pictures will be with him for years, occasionally brought to the forefront of his mind by triggers he can't predict.

"Let's just fuck," he says to Lanie. "Please."

She obliges.

000

They are playing Madden together when Ryan starts talking, and even before he opens his mouth Esposito wants to tell him to shut up.

"I'm sorry," Ryan says. "I know it's awkward being my partner now."

Esposito keeps his eyes on the screen. "It's always awkward being your partner, bro. Do you know how much shit I take for working with a guy they call Honeymilk?"

"That's just Vice," says Ryan.

"It caught on, man. All the other departments think you're Honeymilk now."

"I mean," says Ryan. He pauses. "I'm sorry they went after me first. It's like they knew."

Esposito pauses the game and tosses his controller down on the cushions between them. "Knew _what_?" He doesn't bother to keep the irritation out of his voice.

"That I was the one to go after. That I was the one who would break first."

"You didn't, though. Nobody did. You're thinking retarded."

"They knew, though," says Ryan. He is clutching the controller so tightly that his knuckles are white. Like Esposito, he stares straight at the TV.

There are a lot of things that Esposito thinks, and a couple of them he wants to say: it's your gay suits, it's your blond hair and your fucking babyface, it's that I was in the military and you were in Catholic school, it's that whenever you get coffee you bring back an extra cup for whoever wants it, it's that you're a nice guy and I am a _soldier_-of course they saw the difference. What he says is:

"That was just a practical matter, bro. I don't have any hair."

Ryan blinks over at him. "What?"

"When he held you underwater. You had hair to grab, and I didn't. They just did you first because it was more convenient."

Ryan licks his teeth.

"They're just scumbag criminals, man," Esposito continues. "Don't tell me you're losing sleep over this shit."

"Of course not. I don't care."

"Good." Esposito unpauses the game, and scores a few yards before Ryan catches up to him. "Hey," he says. "You don't really play my lotto numbers, do you?"

"Of course not. I don't play the lottery, Jenny does."

"Yeah? What are her numbers?"

"I don't know." Ryan taps the controller against his leg. "I don't know."

000

_February 22, 2011_


	3. The Final Nail

**Every Man of Us a Murderer**

_Klayter McCabe_

000

"That wasn't their first fight, was it?" Jenny asks. Ryan laughs. They are sitting on the couch together, drinking a second bottle of Sutter Home that Jenny bought on sale at the grocery store. Jenny is an oenophile with a surprisingly refined palate, but for Ryan's sake she sometimes brings home bottles solely for their alcohol content.

"Nah, they fight all the time. It was...weird, seeing Castle so hung up on a suspect."

"I think it's sweet," says Jenny. "His friend Damien believed in him when no one else did, so Castle returned the favor. There's more than loyalty in that; there's a kind of love."

Ryan sets his wine glass down on the carpet, then picks it up again and drains it. "I get it and I don't get it," he says. "Beckett and Esposito think that _everyone _can be a murderer, given the right set of circumstances. Castle should know that, too."

Jenny blinks over at him and gives him her best tipsy smile. "Do you?"

"Well, yes. We've arrested people I would never have guessed were guilty, and we've arrested people who are _good_, and neither of those things stopped them from being murderers.

"Hm." Jenny taps the pads of her fingers against her wine glass, leaving small, smeared partials behind. "I don't know," she says. "Are we counting self-defense as murder?"

"I'm counting _murder _as murder. Self-defense is a different thing."

"Even you?" Jenny asks. "You'd be a murderer in the right set of circumstances?"

Ryan opens his mouth, then closes it again. There are things it is difficult to say to Jenny. "Yes," he admits. "I can think of people I'd kill right now."

He would murder Hal Lockwood. He would murder the Triple Killer. A good lawyer could argue for either of those murders being self-defense. In a way, that good lawyer might have a point. But Ryan would gun them down in the street, never mind due process, never mind a trial. And knowing this about himself makes him feel sick, but it makes him feel strong, too.

"I would be a murderer," Jenny says. "I mean, it would take _a lot_. But if somebody hurt you? I would hunt them down. And I bet Javier would help. So, you know. That would be fun. I could get to know your friends."

The lightness and sincerity her in her tone surprise a laugh out of Ryan.

"I think you're too kind to be a murderer," Ryan says. "I think you're too full of love."

"Oh gosh." Jenny licks her lips. "But doesn't that make me _more _likely to murder someone? I bet the only thing that's gotten more people killed than love is money."

Ryan's mouth is dry. He stands up and pours himself more wine. "I don't want to think of you like that," he says. "If there can only be one good thing in the world, I want it to be you."

Jenny wrinkles her nose. "Why would there only be one good thing in the world? And anyway, you don't get to fall in love with the person you want me to be. You only get to fall in love with me."

Ryan puts down his wine glass and presses one of her hands between two of his own. "I didn't mean it like _that_," he says. But he cannot articulate what he meant to say, he cannot define it in his own mind.

"What about Kate?" she asks. "What about Castle? What about Javier? Are they all murderers?"

"Javier's killed more people than anybody else in homicide," says Ryan. "But that was mostly in Afghanistan. If self-defense doesn't count as murder, neither does war."

They are quiet. Jenny was staunchly against Afghanistan, and staunchly against Iraq, and though she loves Javier for being Ryan's partner, she does not agree with Ryan's unwillingness to classify "war" as "murder." It is one of those things they have been unable to rectify.

"I would murder anyone who hurt you, too," says Ryan. "I would do anything to keep you safe." He does not know, now, if he has the stomach for torture, but he knows he could ask Esposito for help. This cannot be a common friendship marker, but it is comforting all the same. Castle and Beckett are scrupled in a way it would hurt him to challenge, and - no matter what Jenny says - he would do anything to keep her from changing herself enough to be a murderer. Of course there are things Esposito would not do for him, but they are all things too wrong for Ryan to ask.

This is what he wants to explain to Jenny: that person doesn't have to be you. It _can't_ be you. I have other people in my life who would do terrible things for necessary reasons. I have enough murderers.

I need you to stay good.

000

_March 18, 2011_


End file.
